"ENGLAND A CIPHER!"

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 93, 6 February 1875, Page 14

"ENGLAND A CIPHER!"

The enemies of Great Britain have been for some years declaring in no secret fashion that England is|no longer a'first-rate power. A distinguished Irish priest and orator has been recently perambulating America with the intelligence— pleasing enough, doubtless, to the Yankee ears—that the sceptre has departed from England, that she is despised in Europe, that her empire is on the point of crumbling into fragments, and that the annexation of Ireland by America would be a step against which England would not dare to raise a finger. Let us consider the truth of the assertion, and when he who brings it quotes statistics in favor of his anticipations, and, indeed, is only expressing in strong language what many among ourselves have been hinting and whispering for years, the time will not be wasted which we may spend upon a cursory and candid review of the position in which the empire stands with respect to the other great powers of the world. Moreover, we must remember that, m spite of the enlightenment and civilisation of modem tunes, the day has not yet gone by in which annexation as the right of the conqueror has been recognised and acted upon without chastisement, hindrance, or intercession from other powers. Germa _ny has annexed Schleswich-Holstein at the expense of Denmark, and Alsace and Lorraine at the expense of France. The idle tale that these were once German provinces was but vamped up to deceive the world. Whatever may have been the case with Schleswick-Holstein, Alsace and Lorraine, at all events, were French to the core and marrow, yet they were annexed to Germany. An ominous fact ! An unnatural appetite, which we believed to have become as extinct as the craving after human flesh, has sprung into light and activity again, and " earth hunger" is once more to be reckoned upon as one of the bad passions of the Aryan nations. How, then, stands England in her offensive md defensive capacities, now that civilised warfare is gradually assuming the character of a struggle for existence, when Holland and Switzerland tremble as the partridge trembles in the stubble when she knows that the hawk is hovering above her, and when the Berlin journals hint openly at the annexation of Denmark ? It is a fact patent to all, that England is simply nowhere in Continental warfare. The ostentatious protectorate which we have assumed over Belgium is the act of a madman who stands in the front of a rushing train. Germany can pour into the field 1,400,000 trained soldiers, and has the same number of men whom, without arms in their hands, she can employ for purposes of a semi-military character at a moment's notice. France has a military establishment whose strength and effectiveness are scarcely 100,000 men behind that of her mighty rival. Russia can inarch a million of men to the frontier ; Austria has eight hundred thousand, Italy six hundred thousand. England has available for active service between three and four hundred thousand men. In that tremendous conflict of armed nations, which cannot many years be delayed, and of which Woorth and Sedan are but a Quatre Bras to Waterloo, what has (his puny combatant to do with the jostling of giants ? Yet we gurantee, forsooth ! the independence of Belgium — and have cast over that fluttering and timid form the shield of the empire upon which the sun never sets. The simple but impalpable fact remains that on the Continent the British empire is a cipher, and means nothing. It is curious but true that the empire upon which the sun never sets has no power of aggression as a whole. Our colonies must stand or fall by themselves as far as England is conc3rned, and England must stand or fall by herself as far as her colonies are concerned. Such is the result which fate and time and events have brought about. There is kindness, indeed, and and mutual goodwill, but substantial union and solidity there is none. For aggressive purposes we are powerless in America and Europe. What about about Asia ? Doubtless our Indian resources in men are great, but it would be impossible for our Indian Government, without great sacrifices, to establish a military force capable of competing with he vast hordes of Russia. However, there is in that quarter no danger. Russia has yet Central Asia to conquer and assimilate, and will, oven after that, prefer attacking China, which cannot fight, to India which can. What, then, becomes of the glory of an empire upon which, indeed, the sun never sets, whose commercial activity and adventure are boundless, which absorbs the carrying trade of the world, but which is powerless to effect the destiny of nations in any Continent, which is unable to chastise the unrighteous strong and to uphold the weak, to succour waving nationalities, and retrench the overgrowth of ambitious goyerninonts ? For all these purposes England is a cipher. — Daily Express.

The ' London Tablet 5 says:— "We are glad to hear from a Masonic dignitary that the time will soon arrive when Maaons will not " have the painful duty of referring to what has occurred," and when the fervor of their anti-Catholic zeal will be somewhat moderated — at least as regards its public expression. In the meantime the same speaker talks of the acceptance of office by the Prince of Wales as " a defiance against the interference of a foreigi potentate with the liberty of conscience of England." We notice this only to point out that the view thus expressed is quite inconsistent with the doctrine propounded last week by another dignitary — a "Grand Deacon" we believe — in Warwickshire. This gentleman explained that " Freemasonay was a religion of goos work," asked for no priestly intermediary between a man and hid Maker," and was "broadly tolerant of differences in faith and creed," and that " when Roman Catholics were permitted by their spiritual rulers to uphold such opinions as these, then, and not till then, could they consistently continue members of the craft." It is thus admitted that Catholics, if they hold the Catholic faith, cannot consistently be Freemasons. Why then should people talk about "interference of a foreign potentate,/ when one who becomes a Catholic ceases to be a Freemason ? If Freemasonry is one religion, and Catholicism another which is incompatible with it, why should it be any cause for wonder that a man cannot belone to both ? " *